Book Learning

Over the years I have collected so many books, that, in aggregate, they can fairly be called a library. I don’t know what percentage of them I have read. Increasingly I wonder how many of them I ever will read. This has done nothing to dampen my pleasure in acquiring more books. But it has caused me to ponder the meaning they have for me, and the fact that to me they epitomize one great aspect of the goodness of life.
Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books, 19

He was an ordained clergyperson from another denomination who had left pastoral ministry to go into some kind of non-profit work. That detail has been lost to my memory. He had made an appointment to visit with me in my office in a church on the Iron Range. He was pleasant, friendly and out-going – a good conversationalist. As he was sharing his story he talked about his experiences leaving pastoral ministry and going out “into the world.” He had learned a lot in his experiences, and then came the line that I have heard others speak. “I’ve learned a lot, things you can’t learn from books.” He was a smart person, but to my mind he held a simplistic view of what books can offer the human person, and the relationship between learning from books and learning from life.
“You can’t learn that from any book.” The words have a condescending tone to them. In the United States, we have an ambivalent attitude toward education, a divided mind about it. On the one hand we praise learning and wring our hands when we think we are “falling behind” the rest of the world. We are pretty anxious about education right now in this country, and the proposed answers seem to gravitate toward more time in class, more testing, more results (by which we mean the acquisition of skills for the job market). By the way, students in Finland spend fewer hours in the classroom than their European counterparts and are ranked the best performing students in Europe (Harper’s Index, September 2012). Furthermore, I am very supportive of education for job skills and think we can do a much better job of offering vocational training. Yet it is important to remember that making a living and creating a life are distinct. I digress. On the one hand we praise learning, but on the other hand, we celebrate all those self-made successes, people who dropped out of school to make a lot of money. The underlying premise seems to be that if you can be rich without education, then go for it. Were some of our self-made millionaires inspired along the way by things they may have read? Might they have been taught some things along the way by people who valued books? We don’t seem to ask those questions.
To be sure, there are many things we don’t learn or learn as well from books. We recently replaced the walking belt on our treadmill. The old one was torn and we called the company about a new one. They said that one could be ordered, and individuals could install them, but it was not easy. It would take some time. Well, we got the belt put on, though I learned some things about how I would do it differently the next time. We learn by doing. Reading a recipe is not the same thing as cooking a meal. Reading a book about good communication is not the same as actually talking to someone.
Nevertheless, to say in a condescending tone that you can’t learn about that from any book sells both books and ourselves short.
I belong to the community of the written word in several ways. First, books have taught me most of what I know, and they have trained my attention and my imagination. Second, they gave me a sense of the possible…. Third, they embodied richness and refinement of language, and the artful use of language in the service of the imagination. Fourth, they gave me and still give me courage. (Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books, 22-23)
Reading a recipe is not the same thing as cooking a meal, but it enriches our experience of both cooking and eating when we add imagination to the recipe and when we can formulate our experience in words. Language both describes what we feel and experience and shapes feeling and experience. Yes, we learn many things outside of books, but our learning and experiences are enriched through the language we learn by our reading, and by the imagination that is formed through words.
A well-formed imagination does more than enhance individual experience. I am convinced that the broadest possible exercise of imagination is the thing most conducive to human health, individual and global (Marilynne Robinson, 26). In her recent book The New Religious Intolerance, Martha Nussbaum makes a similar point about the importance of imagination for the well-being of society. Good political principles and consistent arguments work well only against the background of morally informed perceptions, and these perceptions need the imagination. Only the “inner eyes” can tell us that what we’re seeing is a full human being, with a range of human purposes and goals, rather than a weapon assailing our safety, or a disgusting piece of garbage. (187) When we imagine the lives of others as full human lives, we treat them as full human beings.
I remember another voice, this one not seated across from me in my office, but coming through the television on CBS Sunday Morning, though when I ever got to watch that program I am not sure. His hair was gray and receding, with a gray beard and round glasses. He was unafraid to speak with the full vocabulary of words he knew, and could string together images and references across a long spoken sentence, leaving the listener almost breathless. His name was John Leonard and he spoke about politics and books and society. He died four years ago, but recently a collection of his essays was published, Reading For My Life. In the title essay, Leonard writes about the reading he has done, its importance in his life, and about the writers he has championed. It seems to me that my whole life I’ve been standing on some tower or a pillbox or a trampoline, waving the names of writers, as if we needed rescue (1). He ends his essay wonderfully. So do they all, these writers I’m waving my arms about, these angels made of words. Watch out for them. They give you dreams. (8)
“You can’t learn that from books” – true about some things, but our dreams are nurtured by our imaginations and our imaginations by our language. About writers – watch out for them; they give you dreams. And who are we without our dreams?

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Langston Hughes

I think I read that in a book.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David